Paying For It

by Chester Brown

It's been a few days since I've finished reading this book, but I wanted to take a while before writing about it, as I'm not sure how I feel about it.

Basically, Chester Brown gives us a journal of his experiences with prostitutes and escorts, in both in-call and out-call situations.  We also get to read a fair amount about his justifications and rationale for this behaviour, and the reactions of some of this closest friends with regards to it.

After having a slow breakup with his last girlfriend (they continued to live together, but her new boyfriend moved in), Brown decided to use prostitutes to satisfy his sexual needs, and to no longer seek relationships with women beyond the monetary kind.  We follow him through a few years of his whoring, as he goes from being a timid john utilizing a pseudonym, to developing a monogamous relationship with one particular woman who he loves, but continues to pay for services rendered.

While the book avoids being particularly graphic, it is indeed pretty explicit in a number of places.  This is definitely not a book for someone who enjoyed Louis Riel and wanted to read more of his stuff (although that's more or less how I came to read it).  Brown gives each woman their own chapter, and gives us as faithful a rendition of their encounter as he can, allowing for the shoddiness of memory, and his desire to protect the identities of these women.  It does seem like he's getting (and paying for) a lot of sex, but it's worth paying attention to the dates listed, as he has carefully organized the time between his encounters.

A book like this is sure to raise all sorts of opinions and questions.  I can see how this arrangement worked for Brown, but recognize that it's not for me.  He doesn't shy away from issues of human trafficking and sexual slavery, but also appear to ever reject a woman if she suspects that her involvement with him is not purely consensual.  Brown fills the last twenty-five pages of the book (before his voluminous notes) with 23 appendices designed to share his views on topics like exploitation, pimping, violence, and Nevada's brothels.  It's a very informative book, opening a window onto a world I am pretty unaware of.  The fact that Brown lives in my city adds particular relevance to the book for me.

This is probably the most honest in a long line of autobiographical and confessional graphic novels completed by Brown and his circle.  I have no doubt that it's an important book; I'm just not sure how much I enjoyed it.  I did find it compulsively readable, but like Brown's meetings with Anne in the book, it left me feeling kind of empty afterwards.

Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography

by Chester Brown

I have wanted to read Chester Brown`s historic comic again almost since I finished reading it in its serialized form, and am pleased that I did.  Riel has long been a figure of interest for me, and I wanted to revisit my memories of this series, and see what insights it may provide into such a controversial Canadian figure.

Louis Riel was the leader of Canada`s Métis people through two uprisings, the Red River Rebellion of 1869, and the Northwest Rebellion of 1885.  The Métis were a mixed-race people, representing a blend of Aboriginal, French, and English and Scottish cultures.  In the 1860s, as the government of Canada prepared to purchase Rupert`s Land (a massive territory that made up the bulk of Canada`s modern-day area) from the Hudson`s Bay Company, the Métis became concerned for their land and their rights to continue living on it.  They took up arms, and were successful in having their rights recognized in the Manitoba Act (not that all of those rights were later honoured).  Riel, though successful, fled arrest and spent many years living in the United States.

Later, as Canadian settlers continued to push westward, towards the Saskatchewan River, the Métis who had moved west ahead of them found themselves in a similar position as before, and Riel was summoned to lead them once again.  The thing is, during those intervening years, Riel kind of lost his mind.  He believed he was the chosen of God, and claimed to receive messages and visions telling him how to proceed (at one point, he believed that Batoche Saskatchewan should become the centre of the Roman Catholic faith).  This rebellion did not go so well, and Riel was captured, tried, and later hung.

Riel has remained a controversial figure in Canadian history.  To the Métis, Aboriginal groups, and many more, he was a Father of Confederation who worked to secure the rights and freedoms of his people.  To many others, he was a traitor who got what he deserved.  Brown, in creating this biography, avoids choosing a side, and prefers to stick as close as he can to the historical record (he provides detailed footnotes explaining the places where he has taken artistic license, or examining areas where historians disagree).  What we have then is a pretty accurate accounting of what happened, with the mistakes and ambitions of many of the principal players revealed.

To a history geek like myself, there is nothing cooler than a comic like this (the actual trial transcript - in comic book form!).  Brown has done a fantastic job of researching the events, and making them into a compelling and fascinating read.  His simple yet detailed drawings, and strict adherence to a six-panel grid, work well here in creating a comic that feels like a historical document.  I wish there were more comics works with this level of historical accuracy, commentary, and scholarship.

McSweeney's Quarterly Concern #13

Edited by Chris Ware

This is the comics issue of McSweeney's, which received a fair amount of attention when it was published in 2004 for showcasing a lot of up-and-coming talent in the arts comics field.  It contains a wide range of short comics and excerpts from longer pieces, as well as a few essays or memoirs about comic books, their history, or their influences on other artists or writers.

The biggest problem with reading this book for the first time six years after it was published is that I've read a lot of the material in here in its complete, finalized form.  This is not really a problem, as I am very happy to return to some of the works here, but it did limit the novelty of reading such a well-produced and designed hardcover with some of my favorite 'independent' artists contained in it.

Ware and company have assembled a very interesting collection, with contributions from people like Adrian Tomine (Shortcomings), Joe Sacco (The Fixer),Charles Burns (Black Hole), Art Spiegelman (In the Shadow of No Towers), Chris Ware, and Los Bros. Hernandez.  There were also plenty of lesser-known cartoonists included, some of whose work I found irritating, while others were quite enjoyable.

Strangely, there was a very visible Canadian delegation to this collection, with and excerpt from Joe Matt's Spent, David Collier's strips about moving to Hamilton, and a long excerpt from Chester Brown's classic Louis Riel, detailing the death of Orangeman and agitator Thomas Scott, a pivotal moment in Riel's story, and a great example of the genius of that book.

Some of the pieces that were new and interesting to me were Ben Katchor's Hotel and Farm strips, one-pagers that dealt with those two topics; David Heatley's Portrait of my Father; and Kim Deitch's Ready to Die, about a man on Death Row.  I also really enjoyed Chip Kidd's memoir on friendships and Batman merchandise.

Of course, as with any anthology like this, there were plenty of things that I either had no interest in, or just flat-out hated (I'm looking at you Kaz), but overall, this was a very worthy purchase.